1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to acupuncture devices and more particularly to an electronic acupuncture point finder for use by a physician to accurately locate the acupuncture points on a patient's body.
2. Background of Invention
The nascent interest by the western medical world in the art of Chinese acupuncture has inspired a variety of electronic devices designed to aid the western physician in the practice of this ancient art. The various electronic devices have been particularly important as research tools for the study of the physiological effects of acupuncture under controlled conditions.
The present invention is an unique electronic device designed to allow the western physician to accurately locate acupuncture points on the patient's body. The body is known to have a large number of acupuncture points, 139 on one ear alone, and an experienced Chinese acupuncturist can locate each with remarkable accuracy. The western physician, however, works from point location charts and, unless he has years and perhaps a lifetime of practice and experience, it is difficult for him to locate the points with precision.
It is known that acupuncture points coincidence with points of low body impedance. Electronic devices have been developed to locate these points, however, the problem with these devices is that they are not accurate nor are they reliable in that spurious low impedance areas of the skin can be confused with acupuncture points. Generally, existing devices consist of an oscillator tuned according to the impedance presented to the point finder probe; as the probe is passed over an acupuncture point the pitch of an audio indicator increases. The audio indicator always sounds and the operator must determine which pitch changes correspond to acupuncture points and which are simply spurious or residual in nature, and in addition he must also determine the height of the pitch change for accurately locating the point.
The present invention overcomes the above-mentioned problems by providing an electronic acupuncture point finder which operates in an on/off mode only giving a positive indication only when the point finder electrode touches an acupuncture point, and wherein spurious changes of body impedances are not indicated. Because of the on/off operation of the present invention, acupuncture points can be easily and accurately located by the physician.
Another disadvantage with existing point finder devices is that they have been known to shock or otherwise cause patient discomfort. The present invention overcomes this problem by providing an acupuncture point finder which can operate on a single 9 volt d.c. battery. Indeed, the present invention is of a compact, lightweight, and low power design which provides portability and ease of operation in addition to this overall safety consideration.